


The Sound of a Clock

by pot_and_kettle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pot_and_kettle/pseuds/pot_and_kettle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur finds the process of growing up is largely done alone until he falls into dreams and fantasy and the lure of creation and demi-godhood and a pair of eyes that are as chameleon-esque as the abilities of the man they belong to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of a Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Team Romance for ae_match. 
> 
> This is told in a series of drabbles for the following prompts: fear, innocence, bias, smile, naked, bonds, silence, overwhelmed, touch, fall. Or, they were supposed to be drabbles but most ended up closer to 150 words except the one in the middle, which is intentionally twice as long. It's the thought that counts? Thanks to snoozing_kitten @ LJ for the beta.

> […] one man in his time plays many parts,   
> His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,   
> Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.   
> And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel   
> And shining morning face, […] then the lover,   
> Sighing like furnace, […] a soldier,   
> Full of strange oaths […]   
> Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel […]  
> The sixth age shifts  
>  Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,   
> […] his big manly voice,   
> Turning again toward childish treble, pipes   
> And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,   
> That ends this strange eventful history,   
> Is second childishness and mere oblivion   
> \- _As You Like It_. II.vii.142-163

####  **fear**

As a child, he is afraid of the dark. He fears the tick-tock countdown to dreaming, those tense minutes of waiting. A sliver of light sneaking in past the door where it’s not quite closed only makes it worse, throwing darkness into even deeper blackness. The corners and spaces under furniture seethe with everything that hides in shadow. 

He fears the loneliness of night, when he is left him to himself, a stranger he won’t know or recognize for years.

But Arthur is a child, a very small one, and all of this is over his head except the stifled muteness of terror. The idea of growing up and out of this seems as impossible as not clinging to Reeves the lion every night for dear life.

Then one day the darkness seems greyer, and Reeves earns a position of honor on his shelves.

####  **innocence**

The first time he holds hands, it’s with a boy. The adults whisper and titter behind their hands and the stereotypical snotty girl who exists in everyone’s childhood memories tells them they’re not doing it right, and stamps her foot angrily. (She wishes it were _her_ hand, though which boy, she cannot say.)

It’s over in thirty seconds, just long enough for Todd, or Jamie (and the fact that Arthur can’t remember never ceases to bother him, decades later), to drag Arthur from the table to the pond.

It’s a very special thing to build a toad house _with_ an actual toad at a garden party. The toad doesn’t get to reside there for long; they decide a much better home for Wart is on top of the girl’s head. 

(Arthur doesn’t grow out of this one.)

####  **bias**

Favoritism is a concept every child is familiar with. Favorite toys get to go on vacations and favorite clothes need to be replaced first. And then there is the staunch defense of the favorite, something taken seriously amongst everyone from the moment they can speak.

“ _Nobody’s_ better than Captain Planet,” Devon insists.

“He’s not even real unless they have a bunch of stupid rings. And one of them is _heart_ ,” Arthur says, imbuing the word with all the disgust of young boys everywhere. 

“But,” Devon argues, “Batman doesn’t count. He doesn’t have a superpower.”

“He kicks so much butt!”

The debate continues, and they never realize how their futures have been shaped by childhood favorites.

####  **smile**

At a certain ages it’s common to see gap-toothed smiles. The Tooth Fairy, Arthur’s father jokes, must have the best interest rate in the world, but Arthur doesn’t get it.

He does understand that he’s a bit behind the curve here, still having all of his baby teeth, and Patrick is proudly displaying his flawed smile, worming the tip of his tongue through the space between teeth.

“What does it feel like?” Arthur asks.

“Like there’s nothing there.”

He wants to ask if he can stick his pinky through the hole, wonders if he’d be able to touch Patrick’s tongue, dismisses it as too weird.

“Wanna feel?” Patrick grins.

The best friends are the ones who understand without being told.

####  **naked**

Humiliation is being the center of laughter, feeling as though the skin has been stripped from his body and all his classmates giggle because his insides haven’t been put together properly. It is nauseating and it lingers, twisting in the stomach, for hours and even days later, flashbacks causing it to writhe anew.

He never tries to play the class clown again, instead answering only when called upon, and, though he doesn’t realize it, he loses something of himself. But he gains something in return, despite having to bite the inside of his cheek to hold impulsiveness at bay so he can think of the real answer, a _good_ answer, a thoughtful answer.

He grows up, just a little.

####  **bonds**

Friends are important, or at least, that’s what he’s taught as he goes through school. Every year, another class on depression and mental balance before they even understand what sadness is. What he learns is that friends who know your secrets aren’t friends at all, and secrets are things that everyone quietly knows, travelling on whispers to those who don’t.

Even the bonds of childhood aren’t enough to overcome small town small-mindedness.

_Brett looks good in his swim trunks._

Next time he’ll remember to chase it with lies like medicine is chased with water to wash it down, _wish I had a body like that . . ._

_. . . in my bed._

He learns that deceit has its purpose, after all.

####  **silence**

His parents are light sleepers, easily rousing at the slightest noise. Arthur learns to be very, very quiet at night, figures out which boards creak the loudest, how to step while distributing weight across the soles evenly instead of focused on the balls of his feet. Twice he’s mistaken for a cat burglar by his mother.

It means that his explorations into self-gratification are slow, drawn-out affairs of feather-light strokes and shallow, quiet breathing. Build up is gradual, like the slow rise of the tide until he can’t help but wrap his fist around his cock and pump until he comes, mouth open but holding his breath for fear of making noise.

Looking back on this memory years later, Arthur will decide it’s only logical his first kiss was in a library.

####  **overwhelmed**

Anxiety is preparing for the future, for a career, for _adulthood_ (which isn’t supposed to happen for _years_ ) at age seventeen. It’s visiting universities and choosing majors and making decisions while knowing nothing about what he wants to do or be and who he wants to be (or do, since he still hasn’t got round to that yet).

He turns eighteen and all the impulsiveness he’s bottled up over the years leaks out all at once; he signs with the military, his parents lose their minds, and months later, when he’s graduated and entered training, he’ll long for the days when he drowned in paperwork and essays instead of mud and sand and sweat and tears. He’ll crave the scent of dusty books and the quietude of home, and wonder if the sound of gunshots and the metallic scent of blood can ever be dulled.

####  **touch**

Fatigues are strangely scratchy, or perhaps Arthur’s skin is just overly sensitive. Despite repeat washings in fabric softener (done on the sly, with the softener transferred to an empty detergent bottle because Arthur already struggles with his babyface image), they never stop being coarse, like starched sheets. It’s almost a relief when his supervising officer makes a point of mentioning the first battery of tests to get into Special Forces. 

And then there is JSOC and working with the CIA and everything is intrigue and onions, where the subtext has subtext has subtext and there’s never an end to layers.

Arthur forgets what softness feels like.

####  **fall, falling**

Through all these and numerous other experiences that can’t possibly be quantified into words, Arthur falls into himself. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he is punched, shoved, beaten into himself, that he stole parts of and threatened for bits of and snuck into himself. It couldn’t possibly be watered down into a simple _growing_.

Himself had become taller than expected—that had been more difficult to fall into than other things. Confidence becomes synonymous with clothes until Arthur gets the hang of it.

And then he falls again into something else. It’s dreams and fantasy and the lure of creation and demi-godhood and a pair of eyes that are as chameleon-esque as the abilities of the man they belong to. It’s the biggest thrill and the dullest moments of tedium and before he knows it (though he planned it, so carefully, every blink and cough and step of the way), he’s crossed into illegality, a real-life extraction ( _theft, darling, call it what it is_ ), lured by the silver tongue of another man, one who he’ll never stop working with, the one who extracted _him_.

The surface here is quicksand, appearing solid, and then dragging him down, clinging hands around his ankles. The pit doesn’t appear to have a bottom.

He finds another part of himself on the way down.

####  **touch**

The amount of distance Eames keeps between himself and his team in reality, outside of a fight, is deceptive. Eames touches with words, rips little cracks and chinks in armor and brushes against the self intimately all while maintaining actual physical distance. Arthur supposes it’s trust; no one in this business trusts each other not to kill, not to steal, not to snitch. 

They never touch, until one day it happens during one of those horribly clichéd corner scenarios, with Arthur focused on his notebook and neither of them possessing the ability to predict what lies ahead when there aren’t security mirrors.

The worn cotton of Eames’ button-down is so soft Arthur feels it catch on his fingertips.

####  **overwhelmed**

There are too many of them. The target’s subconscious apparently believes in overpopulation, and hundreds of suspicious stares are leveled at him while Cobb urgently seduces with lies and half-truths. Eames has forged an innocuous Everyman and is staring at Arthur with the same intensity.

His muscles tense in anticipation of a painful death that stretches seconds into hours.

They need a miracle. He leans towards Eames slowly, carefully, because it needs to be gentle, otherwise it doesn’t have a chance of working. Their lips brush together lightly, and Arthur lingers. Eames isn’t breathing.

The subsequent boom and popping crackles outside distract the projections. Sound rushes to fill the vacuum, a new storyline of holidays and an audience filled with oohs and aahs.

“ _Really_ , Arthur, fireworks?”

####  **silence**

He stands on the miniscule balcony of his hotel room and smokes in the early grey of a rainy dawn. The _catch-scrape-hiss_ of a match flaming to life catches his attention. Eames exhales on his own balcony not five feet away. Paris.

"Matches?"

Eames shrugs. "They’re biodegradable." His voice is rough so soon after waking.

Arthur stares out over damp blue-shingled rooftops. Vibrations of a landing travel across the floor under his bare feet, but he doesn't turn his head.

"Lonely this morning?"

Fingers against his jaw make him jump, and he nearly puts out his cigarette on the back of Eames' hand before he recalls himself. He forgets again when lips touch his own, lingering.

Eames smiles.

“Fireworks.”

####  **bonds**

He dimly remembers learning at some point somewhere that it takes energy to break bonds, that molecules have to build and absorb until it becomes too much and the bond snaps. It didn’t make sense at the time; he imagines a stick splintering, woodchips scattered like the fallout from a bomb, and wonders how the energy can possibly be contained. Counterintuitively, it’s making a bond that produces energy, two atoms clicking together and creating a release of heat—

Arthur looks at Eames slouched down in the chair, his face tilted against the index and third fingers of one hand, thumb against his jaw, ring finger slowly tapping his lower lip—

chemistry has never made so much sense.

####  **naked**

“ _Fuck’s sake_ , Arthur,” is the first thing Eames says upon entering the dream, his voice veering just the slightest bit from urbanity into something rougher as he hurriedly strips.

“I—um. Well.” Ariadne mumbles, toeing off her shoes. Cobb says nothing as he does the same.

“To be fair, I did say he frequented nudist beaches.” Arthur’s voice is muffled behind his sweater. “I can’t be blamed for the projections—there is no way of predicting that.” 

Ariadne chokes. “ _Jesus Christ_.”

“See something you like?” The laughter is evident in Eames’ voice.

Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Mr. Eames, stop forging yourself a bigger dick.” 

“You know as well as I that this is true to size, _darling_.”

####  **smile**

Eames is playful. Eames teases and jokes and flirts, even in bed. Arthur had thought it would be different, more intense, an argument that nobody and everyone wins. And sometimes it is, when tensions are high.

Fingers walk up the inside of his thigh, tickling more than they arouse. Eames watches from where he’s resting his cheek against Arthur’s slightly upraised knee.

“Shall we have another go?”

The insatiability, however, Arthur had dreamed of. The smoothness of his skin, the roughness of the hair on his chest and the stubble on his face, the fullness of his lips—all these had been imagined, but the reality had been so much more. 

The fingers glide backwards, towards his knee. Arthur smiles at the ceiling.

“Only if you stop moonwalking on my thigh.”

####  **bias**

The fact of the matter is that having a forger on a team is a luxury, not a necessity. Most jobs don’t require a forger. Most teams won’t employ them unless necessary, preferring to divide the fee into larger shares. Greed always wins.

Eames’ list of crimes in the real world far exceeds Arthur’s, and Arthur loathes how the minutes of Eames’ jobs are filled with thoughts of how fatal a bullet in reality is.

“You know,” Eames says after Arthur dismisses yet another potential job as ‘too boring,’ “I _can_ be an extractor.”

Arthur stares at him blankly. “You can be an extractor.”

“Who was the one who successfully determined how to incept Robert Fischer, hm? I began as an extractor, you know.”

Arthur blinks, processing this. “An extractor.”

Eames sighs. “ _Imagination_ , Arthur. Do at least _open_ the lid of the box every now and again.”

####  **innocence**

A mug and a teacup sit side-by-side on the table, forgotten as the dregs from their respective beverages slowly evaporate into a thin film that Eames will tease Arthur over in the morning. _Missed me that much, did we?_

Arthur works on a crossword while Eames sleeps off jetlag on his side, one arm curled under his pillow, the other hand on Arthur’s thigh. This is absolute trust. It doesn’t matter if the slightest twitch would wake Eames up; it’s about the willingness of exposure.

Some people look younger when they sleep. Eames’ perpetual not-quite-a-beard stubble ruins the effect, but his face is peaceful, like a child’s.

The hand on his thigh squeezes lightly, sleep-weakened.

“Go back to sleep,” Arthur murmurs. His fingers itch with the urge to do something soppy like stroking the other’s forehead.

Eames slurs words too soft to be understood. The hand relaxes.

####  **fear**

He hasn’t been afraid of guns (or flamethrowers, or car accidents, or any number of things that result in death or dismemberment) in years, decades. For now, in their peak of youth, just before it turns and plummets into old age, they are immortal. They die and die and die again. They kill each other and rise once more, closer to the surface every time, Icarus with fingers stretched to the sun.

Dreams tamper with reality until reality intrudes, bruises that don’t disappear and sprains and bullet wounds that take weeks to heal. Arthur digs his fingernails, short though they are, into Eames’ skin so reality stares him in the face when he wakes up, a totem of a different sort.

He touches his lips to the scratches, feels Eames’ muscles tense, his exhalations become a hiss, when Arthur flicks his tongue over them. The taste is sharp with copper and salt. Dreams have a way of muting flavour.

They will always have immortality and youth in dreams. _We’ll always have Paris, love_ , and Toronto, and Shanghai, and— 

The clock is loud on the nightstand. _Tick-tock_.

This is real.


End file.
